Practising kindness

"Love is a power that moves us to be kind...Kindness is love acting on persons. Such kindness may be soft; it is not weak; tender, but note feeble; senstive, but not fragile."

Lewis Smedes, Love Within Limits, p.12.

What's considered a life well-lived? How to feel good about life at the end of it? For me, perhaps working on my 2008 year resolution is one step towards that direction.

Practising kindness on my students at school - to show more patience and respect to the ones that seem to be asking "stupid" questions all the time, being more understanding that they may be trying to learn. Keep my cool.

Practising kindness on my piano students - to use a softer tone of voice and not get upset when they don't practise. After all, they're still kids.

Practising kindness on the parents of my piano students. A student's grandma in Hong Kong is seriously ill, and the family is scrambling air tickets to fly back asap. Instead of reiterating my policy, I ended up sharing about peace and making exception for last minute lesson cancellation. It would be horrendous if she (a Catholic) finds that a Christian piano teacher expresses no sympathy but thinks only of financial gain. Thank God that I wasn't talking entirely about money.

Things were not rosy, but it's been a good week. If I may express kindness everyday, I think I will feel my life's well-lived by the end of it.

2008

When I finished my lecture the other day, it's almost 7pm. No real food in the fridge, and I was too tired to buy grocery and cook. I would rather endure the long queue at the drive-through, so I headed to In-N-Out Burger. It took about 20-30 minutes from entering the queue to getting my burger and fries. The cashier was exceptionally kind.

I couldn't pinpoint what it was, the eye contact with a warm smile, or taking the initiative to ask if I wanted tomato ketchup on the side, and watched my response until he saw me nod. It was an unexpectedly pleasant experience. Unexpected because it came from a stranger!

The drive-through encounter generated some thought ripples within me - what a joy it is to be acted upon kindly! I want to do the same to those who I come into contact. Strangers or no strangers.

The last chapter on Smedes' Love Within Limits, which I'm finishing this week, echoes my experience. Here's a simple definition of the agapic love:

"The power that moves us to respond to a neighbor's needs with no expectation of reward. Giving of itself, it asks no return on its investment. It ignores the subtle calculations of human love; it is not interested in the odds of getting some self-satisfaction in return for its efforts. It gives, not in the hope of inspiring the loved one to give in turn, but simply because the other is there and in need."

I drove away from In-N-Out surmising that the cashier might be a Christian, as there was kindness and warmth emitted. What, other than the power of agapic love, would prompt one to extend kindness for no reason?

In the past, my motivation to act kindly was to look good, to be treated kindly in return, and to be morally correct. In other words, I often wanted something back. I feel that I'm less bound by these selfish thoughts and am able to give just for the sake of giving this year.

My 2008 year resolution, therefore, continues to be about love, or, more precisely, kindness. Afterall, love is a topic too large to learn in a year (2007).

As I carried the burger and fries home in a bag, I thanked God for the cashier. I haven't found out if he's a Christian. I only learned from the receipt that his name is Israel.

Love does not seek its own

I have thought for some time that the popular ideology of self-actualization, self-fulfillment, self-realization, self-satisfaction doesn't square with the self-denying ideology preached by Jesus, but couldn't articulate what exactly the problem is let alone figuring out the solution.

Self-actualization is ALWAYS what drives me forward. As Smedes wrote, "We feel at our moral best precisely when we strive to become more of our better self than we are. And when we feel we have attained a glimmer of our best self, we think of it as a gift of God. How deep is this need! How strong is this drive! How tragic when we lose it and come to terms too soon with the self we usually are."

What then is the problem? Reading Smedes's chapter on "Love does not seek its own self" proves to be a paradigm shift for me; or, to be precise, my mental center of gravity moved as I held my breath & read on:

The source of all the evils connected with self-seeking is that we turn our ideal self into an idol and expect other people to dance around it...We exploit people and push them around...flatter them, put them down. Whether crudely or with artistic finesse, we treat them as replaceable supports for the ego we are trying to build into a self. This is the poison that so easily gets into all erotic love; we love others only so that they will be acolytes at the altar of our divinized self.

The image of the self that is sought as the idol of ultimate devotion takes on different and changing forms. The ideal self of immature people is a fabric woven of fads nd fancies. For others, more mature and yet not fully developed, the ideal is the productive self. For others, it is a mixture of the noble, wise, humane saint and the earthy, happy sinner. For still others, the model is Jesus of Nazareth....

Many people combine a kind of self-denial with self-worship. Self-denial of this sort says No only to things; it is really self-discipline. We exercise even if we hate doing it; we do not smoke; we turn down the rich food we love to eat; we deny ourselves for the sake of a healthy body... All these sorts of denials have in common that they are disciplines, not self-denials. They are denials of things, not a denial of the self. Their spiritual value depends wholly on one question: are they for the self as an end, or for the self as a means of love?

Love is the divine force that moves us to make the neighbor our center of concern, drives us toward him without demanding a reward. Love does not put the self on center stage and ask the world around to applaud. Love does not praise a neighbor only to get praise in return. Love does not strive to become the better self merely to enjoy the excitement of being a splendid person. Love lifts our sights beyond the ideal self we are seeking. For this reason, not even our ideal self is our god, the goal of our life's quest. Hence, love cannot be self-seeking unless the self being sought is pre-registered as an agent of love (pp.50-51).

It's like he's writing about me, and says that's wrong! Good thing, this is not the end of the chapter. Smedes explains agapic love liberates one from self-seeking. Can quote everything here. You got to read the book yourself. (I'm going to buy it. The copy I have now is from a library.)

Love is a power

Flipping through the pages of Lewis Smedes's Love Within Limites: A Realist's View of 1 Corinthians 13 as ablogaday recommended, I am already blown away by the Preface, "A Love Song Is ...":

A Great Love Song is a moment of ecstasy frozen into words, a rhapsody of enthusiasm and passion, a metaphoor pointing to a moment....

God's love song is in many ways like other great love songs. Its human writer St. Paul ... saw ... into love's ideal form... [H]is love song draws a profile of ideal love, but it is too plain for mystic passion. Love is not jealous, does not get angry quickly, endures very much -- these are qualities for ordinary living in ordinary days. This is our challenge: to find ways to bring the heavenly rhapsody down into our own worldly realities (mine emphasis).

Great stuff! No wonder I found 1 Cor 13:4-8 bland. The list of "Love is patient ... kind ... not envious" is only a profile. It's the sun ray but not the sun itself.

Love Within Limit explores how selfless love "can take root in the crevices of real life." Love, the author assumed, is a power of "selfless love works only within the tissues of our self-interested lives."¹

I get my orientation straightened out, finally. I shouldn't be spending time to read the book now, but I think I would. More to come later.

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¹ Lewis Smedes, Love Within Limits (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), xii.